Generally, an electrical connector includes some form of dielectric or insulative housing which mounts one or more conductive terminals. The housing is configured for mating with a complementary mating connector or other connecting device which, itself, has one or more conductive terminals. A connector assembly typically includes a pair of mating connectors, such as plug and receptacle connectors sometimes called male and female connectors.
Various types of electrical connectors are designed for mounting on a printed circuit board. The connectors have terminals which include contact portions for engaging the terminals of a complementary mating connector. The terminals of a board-mounted connector having terminating ends for connection to appropriate circuit traces on the circuit board, such as solder tails for solder connection to the circuit traces on a top surface of the circuit board and/or in holes in the board.
Still further, some electrical connector assemblies or mating connectors must be sealed from contaminants in the environment. One prior sealing method has been to employ a gasket between a pair of abutting edges of the two mating connectors. Another method has been to construct the mating connectors with mating edges that slide over each other forming overlapping walls. A further method has been to provide a flexible boot surrounding each connector, with the mating edges of the boots engaging each other in compression. While all of these prior methods work well for their intended purposes, each method requires major modifications to the connectors and, therefore, add considerable costs in manufacturing the connectors. The sealing problems are further magnified in applications where a pair of electrical connectors are mounted between a pair of generally parallel printed circuit boards. The present invention is directed to solving these problems by providing an extremely simple but very effective system for sealing two mating connectors disposed between two printed circuit boards.